Rob Oller commentary: Style points not part of BCS, but should be

Tuesday

Nov 2, 2010 at 12:01 AMNov 2, 2010 at 9:10 AM

Nowhere does the absurdity of the Bowl Championship Series rankings show up more sensationally than in the confounding theoretical possibility that the best team in the NFL would not be ranked No.1 in college football.

Nowhere does the absurdity of the Bowl Championship Series rankings show up more sensationally than in the confounding theoretical possibility that the best team in the NFL would not be ranked No. 1 in college football.

Pick your team. The New England Patriots? Now place them in the Sun Belt Conference. Even if your NFL team won every game 300 to 0, it still would suffer because its weak strength of schedule could not be overcome by its gargantuan average margin of victory.

And this year's national championship trophy goes to Boise State. In other BCS games, the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints defeated Virginia Tech 252-3 in the Orange Bowl.

Stupid computers. Or maybe not. Before firing flaming cardboard cutouts of Mark May at the dolts who program the computers used in the BCS rankings, it is best to clear the confusion concerning who is to blame for what.

Jeff Sagarin, one of the BCS numbers crunchers, has two words for those who rip the computer component for failing to distinguish between a close call and 50-point blowout.

Actually, he has three words, but the first one - dopes - is reserved for those in the media who keep banging on the computers for failing to take "style points" into consideration when slotting teams.

As Sagarin not-so-subtly points out, the programmers, at the behest of the BCS, stopped factoring margin of victory into the rating equation after the 2004 season. It doesn't matter whether a team wins by one point or 100, the computer rankings only recognize wins and losses.

So Ohio State fans who are frustrated because the Buckeyes remain No. 11 in the BCS rankings despite outscoring their past two Big Ten opponents 101-10 should blame the voters, not the statistical programmers whose calculations account for only one-third of the total; the USA Today coaches poll and Harris Interactive Poll combine to account for the other two-thirds.

Which brings us to Sagarin's other two words: Gedanken experiment.

Loosely defined, a Gedanken experiment is carried out in thought only, usually to clarify a theory or principle. An example would be the Patriots playing against college teams. It will never happen, but Sagarin, who did graduate work at Ohio State in the 1970s, used it to shed light on the issue of style points. Basically, he is in favor of rewarding teams who dominate their opponents, which explains why his non-BCS rankings that appear in USA Today take victory margin into consideration.

Even if the pollsters voted New England No. 1, the BCS would punish the Patriots for playing patsies. Scores don't matter, which explains why Boise State, ranked No. 4 in the BCS, is in danger of finishing outside the top two and missing out on the national championship game even if it goes undefeated and wins every game by 50 points. The Broncos are No. 5 in the computers; Sagarin has them No. 13. Style points also have not helped Ohio State, which is No. 16 in the computers despite winning by an average margin of 27 points.

"If playing a weak schedule, the way to show that you're really good is to destroy that schedule, which (an NFL team) obviously would," Sagarin said yesterday. "The (BCS) rating is the politically correct rating, which ignores scores. It's not the best way, but it's the way the BCS wants to do it."

I posed the question to Sagarin of whether adding a computer component that caps the margin of victory at, say, 30 points, might work as a compromise. He said it would not make a big difference.

The mathematician, whose program is one of six used by the BCS, stresses that how the BCS conducts its business does not mean he thinks the system void of merit.

"I love ice cream. My personal favorite flavor is strawberry, but if somebody offered me a box of pistachio I'd eat it," he said. "So with college football; no matter the flavor I love it.

"In my heart of hearts, I'd like a 16-team playoff and fun bowls for the (remaining) teams. But all the boxes taste good. It's just that different people have different ideas of what's the best-tasting box."

Just don't put Sagarin in the box with those who worry that winning with style points is inhumane. There's a reason they put scoreboards in stadiums. The BCS bigwigs may disagree, but points matter.

Rob Oller is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.

roller@dispatch.com

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